Concepts and consistency in political argument

Abstract

References to the philosophy of logic and language are common in political theory to help justify certain styles of conceptual analysis. Yet such references are usually done in a relatively unsystematic way. I propose a new brand of conceptual analysis called 'destructive conceptual analysis' for political theory from a systematic engagement with the philosophy of logic and language. It involves a significant inversion where instead of defining terms we eliminate them. The brand is derived from the coupling of two-dimensional semantics with the thesis of reasonable rejection to rigorously describe the property of political argument. Two-dimensional semantics provides the only theory of language that I am aware of that can interpret the problem of rhetoric where linguistic conjuring tricks are used to hide inconsistencies in arguments. Such an interpretation distinguishes between instances where political argument has been suspended in conversation (i.e. hijacked) by demagogic word play and where it has not. 'Destructive conceptual analysis' is a complementary method to this distinction that decisively proves whether political argument has been hijacked or not regardless of the protests of conversers. When competent individuals cannot rephrase their argument under the linguistic constraints of elimination this is proof that their conversation - whatever it was - was not substantive political argument. I call the overall framework of my approach 'the veil of anal retentiveness' (as it is a genuine alternative to the 'veils' introduced by the likes of John Rawls and James Buchanan). The second half of the dissertation is devoted to applying this framework to the sort of conceptual debates in political theory and science that Robert Dahl describes as giant globs of oily ambiguity. These chapters demonstrate the decisiveness and usefulness of my method. Show more